Prosodic sensitivity and reading fluency of musicians and non-musicians
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Prosodic sensitivity and reading fluency of musicians and non‑musicians Anja L. Obergfell1 · Barbara M. Schmidt1 · Prisca Stenneken1 · Sonja K. Wittemann1 · Alfred Schabmann1 Accepted: 28 September 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This study investigates the effects of prosodic sensitivity on reading. Highly capable adult musicians (i.e., persons with potentially excellent prosodic skills) and nonmusicians were compared in terms of prosodic sensitivity and reading. Furthermore, the study examines possible reciprocal effects of prosodic sensitivity and reading. Sixty native German-speaking university students, musicians (n = 30) and nonmusicians (n = 30), completed three measures of prosodic sensitivity on the sentence level. In addition, word and nonword reading were tested. To check for possible reciprocal effects of prosodic sensitivity and reading, groups of musicians and nonmusicians matched on the reading level as well as the prosodic sensitivity level were compared. The results showed that musicians outperformed non-musicians in two of the three prosodic sensitivity measures and both reading measures. Considering subgroup analysis this seems to indicate a non-reciprocal effect of prosodic sensitivity on reading. Moreover, when controlling for phonological awareness, prosodic sensitivity showed a unique effect on reading in the whole sample. Based on the results, we argue that good prosodic sensitivity can facilitate reading performance. Keywords Basic auditory processing · Musicians · Prosodic sensitivity · Reading
Introduction There is increasing interest in the relationship between prosodic sensitivity (PS) and reading. Empirical evidence for the influence of PS on reading comes from studies comparing persons with and without dyslexia (Cuetos, Martínez-García, & Suárez-Coalla, 2018; Goswami, Gerson, & Astruc, 2010; Goswami et al., 2013; Leong, Hämäläinen, Soltész, & Goswami, 2011) as well as correlational studies * Anja L. Obergfell anja.obergfell@uni‑koeln.de 1
Department of Special Education and Rehabilitation, Faculty of Human Sciences, University of Cologne, Klosterstr. 79b, 50931 Cologne, Germany
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(Arciuli, 2017; Clin, Wade-Woolley, & Heggie, 2009; Defior, Gutiérrez-Palma, & Cano-Marín, 2012; Goswami et al., 2010; Holliman et al., 2017; Holliman, Wood, & Sheehy, 2008, 2010a, 2010b; Jarmulowicz, Taran, & Hay, 2007). However, some studies report an effect only for a subsample of a certain age (Gutiérrez-Palma, Defior, Jiménez-Fernández, Serrano, & González-Trujillo, 2016; Lin, Wang, Newman, & Li, 2018) or a certain type of reading outcome (Wade-Woolley, 2016; Whalley & Hansen, 2006). Furthermore, several correlational studies could not confirm the influence of PS on reading (Deacon, Holliman, Dobson, & Harrison, 2018; Kim & Petscher, 2016; Schmidt, Breuer-Küppers, Göntgen, & Schabmann, 2016). As the results of correlational studies are inconsistent, the present study aims to examine the PS–reading relationship with a novel approach. Alongside
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